a. p. o. r. t. i. o. n. o. f. p. r. o. c. e. e. d. s. g. o. e. s. t. o. c. h. a. r. i. t. y.

There is a children’s movie song that has become one of the most precise pieces of political commentary on the internet, and I don’t think that’s an accident. I think it’s because the people who wrote it understood something about power that most political analysts spend entire careers trying to articulate. The song is “How Bad Can I Be” from The Lorax, and if you haven’t watched a billionaire make a devastating announcement about the environment recently and immediately heard it playing in your head, you might not be spending enough time online.

The song belongs to the Once-ler, the film’s villain, a man who discovers a resource he can exploit, builds an empire off of it, destroys an entire ecosystem in the process, and narrates his own ascent with genuine enthusiasm. He’s not conflicted. He’s not tortured. He doesn’t lie awake at night. He’s having the time of his life. And the song captures that perfectly: the logic of someone who has decided that the rules don’t apply to them because the money keeps coming in and the people around them keep applauding.

How bad can I be? I’m just doing what comes naturally.

The internet recognized something in that line. They recognized it because they’ve watched it play out in real time, over and over, with real names and real consequences. A man builds a company, becomes one of the wealthiest people in history, buys a platform used by millions to communicate, and proceeds to run it into the ground while laying off thousands of workers. How bad can I be? Another one launches rockets into space for fun while his workforce operates under conditions that safety inspectors flag repeatedly. How bad can I be? Another uses his fortune to lobby against the very environmental regulations that might slow down the damage his industries cause. How bad can I be? I’m just doing what comes naturally.

What makes the song so perfectly suited for this use is the cheerfulness of it. The Once-ler isn’t a brooding villain. He’s not even a calculating one. He’s gleeful. And that glee, that complete absence of self-awareness or remorse, is exactly what people are pointing at when they post the clip under a news story about another oil spill, another gutted environmental protection, another billionaire buying a superyacht the size of a small island while publicly claiming to care about climate change.

There’s a particular kind of violence in the way wealth insulates people from consequence. Not just legal consequence, though that too, but the basic human consequence of having to face what you’ve done. The Once-ler never has to smell the smog. He never has to drink the water. He watches the Truffula trees fall from the window of his tower and asks with genuine curiosity: how bad can I be, if someone’s still paying me?

That’s the part that lands. That’s why the song travels. Because it names something that serious journalism sometimes struggles to name, which is that many of the people making decisions that will affect this planet for generations are not confused or misinformed or weighing difficult tradeoffs in good faith. They know what they’re doing. They’re just decided that it’s fine because nothing has stopped them yet.

What I find fascinating, and a little hopeful, is that people turned to a children’s movie to say it. Not a think piece. Not a protest song. A cartoon. Because sometimes the most honest thing in the room is the thing that wasn’t trying to be polite about it.

The Lorax speaks for the trees. Nobody asked him to. Nobody gave him a platform or a budget or a seat at the table. He just showed up and said: something is wrong here, and I’m going to keep saying it even if no one listens.

I think a lot of people feel like that right now. And when they don’t have the words, apparently, they have the song. Music is a way we communicate with each other and are able to understand ourselves. Art helps us do that.

And the PR people are lying
(How ba-a-a-ad can I be?)
And the lawyers are d. e. n. y. i. n. g.
(How ba-a-a-ad can I be?)
Who cares if a few trees are dying?

oh how bad can I be ? I’m just following my destiny.